


love me well

by godtierfics (godtiercomplex)



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Angst, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:15:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25962700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godtiercomplex/pseuds/godtierfics
Summary: It’s almost too easy how hard they fall in love together.It’s fine. It’s alright.It’s what Fai wants after all.
Relationships: Fay D. Fluorite/Kurogane
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32
Collections: 2020 KuroFai Olympics - Fluff vs Angst





	love me well

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written KuroFai in so long, forgive me.

The winter nights are always the worst, Fai finds. Maybe that’s why he’s here, in this bar drinking to warm himself up. Others are here, partnered more often than not. It’s hard not to be when living in this day and age.

His arm hurts like it rarely does nowadays as he watches as the timer on his wrist counts down and then looks up to see his soulmate standing there, looking around for him. Fai waits until their eyes meet and he smiles. A somber melody rings out in his head, shocking him for a moment before he lets his smile widen into a grin.

“Hello,” he says to his soulmate, “I’m Fai, nice to meet you.”

The man looks relieved and says, “Kurogane. Mind if I buy you a drink?”

And Fai can’t help but think it’s charming that someone still has manners like this.

After all, just because they’re soulmates doesn’t mean it’ll always work without effort on both of their parts. Courtship still matters no matter how romantic one tries to be.

The timers have existed for a few hundred years now. Everyone’s born with one on their wrists, counting down the exact moment that they will meet their soulmate. When you meet them, allegedly a tone that only the both of you can hear rings out in both of your hands. Many soul pairs have made that melody into their wedding song— a unique song only for them.

It’s as if the God or whatever who cursed the world with the timers wanted to be sure people knew when they had met their match.

Fai has never hated God more than in this moment.

He lets Kurogane buy him a drink.

Kurogane is a fitness instructor and it makes so much sense it leaves Fai laughing over his drink. Of course tall, dark and handsome works out and helps others. Of course. Fai is a teacher because that is what he always wanted to be when growing up. They’re both playing along with fate.

The bar remains crowded until such a point that Kurogane asks, “Want to go take a walk?” and Fai goes with him because his soulmate can’t be a serial killer. They wouldn’t have heard their heart song if that was the case. They step outside of the club, and the move from the heat to the winter breeze cuts sharply through Fai. No matter how many layers he wears, he’s always cold in winter. He hates the snow.

He hates the memories more.

Fai doesn’t have time to think about memories because his newly found soulmate is holding out a hand and asking, “Are you okay?” and Fai has to lie and say, “I’m fine.”

“Maybe we should go back in?” Kurogane says.

“No, I was tired of the bar anyway. Why don’t we go grab something to eat? Get to know each other more?” It’s the right thing to do— it’s what he should do. It’s what he needs to do. He needs to know this man, analyze him, figure him out. Soulmates they might be, but he will be damned if he doesn’t know everything about this man before the week is out. There’s so much of their lives that they’ve lived apart from one another— it only makes sense that now they learn one another fully and completely.

So, they find a 24-hour diner, and they settle in. Kurogane asks questions like he’s preparing for the bar. Fai handles all the questions with ease, and can tell that he’s winning Kurogane over.

It’s almost too easy how hard they fall in love together.

It’s fine. It’s alright.

It’s what Fai wants after all.

* * *

There’s a deep pain in Fai, Kurogane finds himself thinking as he pushes the cart along. They’re at the grocery store, buying food for their third date and Fai has paused in front of a display for chocolate chip cookies. He’s silent for a long moment and then silently puts a box in the cart. Kurogane doesn't comment, and soon enough Fai goes back to his mask of joy. He fakes happiness like he’s going to be arrested or blamed if he looks even the tiniest bit sad. It had been Kurogane’s suggestion that they cook for their date this time around instead of going out to eat, and he finds himself almost regretful as Fai pauses at the oddest times.

As if reminding himself of something, or someone.

At the checkout lane, he and Fai unload the basket and he babbles happily to the clerk about how they’re making their first meal as a bonded pair, and the old woman looks delighted, talking all about how her first time cooking with her soulmate went.

By the time they’ve checked fully out and Fai is waving his farewells, Kurogane knows the woman has adopted three children with her wife, has been overseas to England, France and America and has a fondness for the chocolate chip cookies that Fai put in the basket. Fai had smiled and said, “They’re my absolute favorite too!”

Liar, Kurogane thinks.

They cook dinner and it’s like acting in a play with how high struck Fai is. Everything must go exactly so, just right or else he stumbles and flinches away as he rethinks the situation. Kurogane eventually just grabs his shoulders and leads him over to a chair with a tall glass of wine.

“I’m getting an aneurysm just watching you,” he says.

Fai laughs, “You’re so mean, Kuro-rin. But I’ll stay right here and just look pretty for you, hm?”

“Yeah, you do that.” Kurogane goes and fetches those thrice damned cookies and puts them next to Fai. “Have a snack while you wait. The meat shouldn’t be much longer though, and the vegetables are nearly done as well.” As he’s talking the rice maker goes off and he smiles, pleased that something is going well this evening.

The cookies are untouched when he returns to check on Fai, so he opens it up and eats one himself. They’re okay. Not the best, but decent enough. He has another brand he likes better.

Fai notices him and turns his attention away from the tv. He absent mindedly eats a cookie as he turns down the volume on the tv. “Am I unbanned from the kitchen now?”

“Dinner’s almost done,” Kurogane says. “Do you wanna eat here or there?”

“This is my favorite show!” Fai says. It’s a random sitcom, a romcom from the looks of it. “Why don’t we sit here and watch it together?”

So they curl up on the couch, plates in hand, as the romcom plays on. As expected Fai knows every line, every beat, and he’s excited like he’s greeting an old friend.

For once his joy isn’t faked. He’s just existing in the moment of the film, and Kurogane falls for him. Soulmates are your destiny after all, and Kurogane’s starting to feel that he doesn’t need to fight back against it with Fai.

It’s not easy, but it just makes sense to let himself fall in love after that.

They have many more dinner dates, visits to museums, to shows, to the movies. And each time Kurogane will notice that Fai looks happier and happier. He stops pretending, stops lying as much, and the real him shines out. Fai is snarky, sarcastic. He pretends to be an airhead, and yet is one of the smartest people Kurogane knows.

Kurogane meets his sister for lunch in the weeks following their first five dates, and she looks at the timer on his arm, and frowns for a moment. She’s probably mad he didn’t call her immediately. He can’t help but feel like he owed it to himself and Fai to give themselves this private time.

“What’re they like?” Tomoyo asks, bringing back her soft smile.

It’s hard to explain Fai in one word, so Kurogane settles on two. “Wonderfully complicated.”

“You always did like a mystery,” Tomoyo says. “What’s their name? What do they do?”

It’s easy enough to explain that Fai teaches elementary, that he’s a good cook if a bit anxious sometimes over it, and that he loves romcoms about soulmates. Kurogane’s sister nods at all of that, and then asks, “What about his family?”

Kurogane doesn’t have an answer for that. They’ve been moving fast, yet slow, so mentions of family haven’t really been a concern. Kurogane has mentioned Tomoyo, but Fai’s never mentioned anyone. Kurogane hasn’t pressed it because it only takes one flash of pain in Fai’s eyes for him to not want to be the cause of further pain.

“I don’t know,” Kurogane says.

“Hm,” Tomoyo says and leaves it at that. They talk about his job, they talk about how her timer’s rapidly counting down to mere months before she meets her soulmate. They talk about how she’ll be off to college soon and what she’ll learn there. They talk around Fai and all his mysterious ways.

Mysteries or not, he knows that Fai is a good person, a good guy.

* * *

They have fallen into a routine, Fai discovers. They meet up after work at either Kurogane’s house or his apartment, and they talk about their day apart from the other. They cook dinner while the tv plays low, and they get to know each other more and more. Kurogane is perfect, because of course he is. His life is together in ways that Fai hadn’t realized people’s lives could be.

“Have you ever had issues?” Fai asks once, idly while washing up dishes.

“Everyone has issues,” Kurogane says, giving him an odd look. He has been doing that a lot recently, Fai finds.

Fai wonders if it was because they are approaching the three month mark, and most of everything that they had discovered about the other was how perfectly their lives meshed, how well they suited. Some of Fai’s coworkers have commented on how much lively, happier he has been in recent weeks. Fai has just smiled, wondering if he’s been giving off depression vibes unknowingly. Or maybe it had been intended as a compliment, not a commentary that he had been less lively, less happy before meeting Kurogane. It isn’t hard for people to miss that his timer has zeroed out. They are probably only saying that he seemed happier the way people complimented someone on their wedding day.

“Fai,” Kurogane says, and Fai realizes he has been washing the same cup for the past few minutes while Kurogane has patiently waited on him to continue. “If it helps any, my younger sister bullied me into going to therapy for my anger issues a few years ago.”

“I can’t imagine the great Kuro-chin at therapy— though anger issues? You seem awfully mellow to me now,” Fai says.

“Thank my therapist,” Kurogane says with a smile, “She said I was too mellowed and kicked me out a few months ago.” And they shouldn’t be joking about therapy, yet they are. Sometimes Kurogane says or does things that make him stop and thank God that of all the people in the world who could’ve been Fai’s soulmate it was Kurogane.

Fai’s soulmate is Kurogane, and they will be happy together.

His arm hurts sometimes as if reminding him of something it thinks he forgot.

He lets Kurogane fuck him that night for the first time.

Maybe that was what was missing?

Of course he asks about the scars, and Fai tells a half lie, half truth, half of something to make him content. Kurogane’s dark eyes don’t seem as content as Fai would like, but he leaves it alone.

Maybe things can work out, keep working like they have been if Kurogane leaves well enough alone.

* * *

It was difficult at first to talk about the scars, but Fai eventually does. He’d been in an accident and they’d operated for hours afterwards. The doctors pieced him together again. That’s all there was to it. So, Kurogane lets that lie stand. No need to go bringing up old wounds— everyone had their scars, and Fai deserves to keep his to himself. At least until he wanted to share.

Sometimes it felt like he was making love to a ghost, Fai is so gone in his own head.

Where does he go, when he is there and yet so far away?

Yet, they were soulmates, and that meant that despite everything that kept tripping Kurogane’s sensors, that kept tripping him up, it means something.

That countdown, their song (melancholic as it was) meant something.

Having a soulmate wasn’t easy— loving someone as complicated, as messy as Fai wasn’t easy either. You couldn’t just love someone well, and so Kurogane stayed.

He stayed past the half truths, the half lies, the secrets. He stayed because he was loyal to a fault— and who was more worthy of his loyalty than this man? His soulmate, that perfect missing half of his soul?

Even as much as Fai didn’t seem to think he was quite worthy of it, Kurogane was still happy to show him that he was each and every day.

Many soulmates would’ve set their wedding date by the second month, but Kurogane was content to wait. Whatever harm had happened to his soulmate before they had met was something that Fai needed time to heal from. Maybe Kurogane was merely meant to help with that process.

After all, finding your soulmate didn’t mean that everything would magically be well, that all ills would be healed. It just meant that at a certain time, at a moment, you ran into the one meant for you and you two would begin the process of making it work.

And it would work out as long as they kept working at it.

But it didn’t mean that they didn’t each need a little push along the way.

Maybe it’s that reason that has him up one night when Fai has one of his nightmares. They’ve taken to spending the night together, nearly four months into the relationship, and without fail, every night, Fai has a nightmare. He had warned Kurogane about them, told them that they would bother him, and yes they do bother Kurogane four months into this relationship. Yet, not for the reason why Fai thinks. They bother him because just before Fai wakes up and stumbles into the bathroom to throw up— he quietly mutters two words in his nightmare state.

“Forgive me.”

You can’t love someone well, but Kurogane does suggest that Fai consider getting a therapist for the nightmares. He gets a psychiatrist instead, and they give him sleeping medicines. No more nightmares, at least, but it's not getting to the root of the issue.

All Kurogane can do is stand by him, though, all he can do is hold fast.

Fai’s his soulmate, after all, yet something sometimes feels so off.

(Sometimes Fai will hug his left arm close to his body, and just sit there in silence on the couch. Kurogane just watches him at those times, letting him have his moment for as long as he needs it. At the end of these sessions, Fai will notice him and offer up a wide smile and then turn on the tv. “Let’s watch something,” Fai will say, and Kurogane will join him.

The left arm is the one with the most scars on it.

Kurogane wonders how hard it must still hurt. Scar tissue is never fun to handle— his own arm can attest to that.)

Tomoyo calls him to give him the news that she’s met her soulmate. A cute girl, from the sounds of it, and she’s excited that it’s her next door neighbor. They’re 18 and already have so much to look forward to.

He’s 29 and wondering just how he can possibly help Fai. It’s when he runs into his old therapist at the store that he has a revelation. If therapy could fix him and his anger issues after his accident cost him his arm, and netted him this prosthetic, maybe therapy can fix Fai. Maybe it’ll help with that deep sadness, that pain in his eyes.

It’s worth a shot at least, right?

* * *

They’re four months into the relationship when Kurogane suggests he sees someone. Fai’s never played at this relationship life before, has avoided all close attachments (had been waiting for Kurogane) so he’s a bit upset at the suggestion at first. But then he realizes that he doesn’t want to lose this, this life that he’s so carefully built up so he does. The doctor helps, and the nightmares (the flashbacks) stop at night. They’re worse during the day. He’ll just be standing there, and suddenly the cold will sweep over him, and he’s there again.

Staring at his own face and watching himself bleed out.

He didn’t realize his pain was broadcasting so clearly enough for Kurogane to sense, to see, but Kurogane is his soulmate. He has a sense for these things after all, that must be how it works. How many movies has Fai seen where one soulmate gets hurt, and the other feels the pain so deeply and then rushes to find their soulmate, demands to be with them no matter what?

(How has Kurogane not realized yet?)

How many soulmate pairings has he met that have been so attuned to one another that they just mesh, so well, that it just makes sense when you look at one and then the other that “Of course, that’s your soulmate.” Fai wonders if people think the same when they see him and Kurogane— but of course they do. Why wouldn’t they?

(His own face, his own eyes, his own blood spreading across a snowy road.)

So, they keep up their relationship. Fai seeing someone and getting pills so they can spend the night together, and Fai losing his mind during the times they’re not together, seeing those flashbacks constantly. When he finally tells the doctor about the flashbacks, telling as much of the truth as he dares, telling it slant, he’s given yet more medicine. A cocktail of sanity.

It helps.

It’s surprising how much it helps to finally think clearly for the first time in years. To see himself and know that he is not himself. To look at his life and realize he’s been living a lie. Everything done in sake of a memory, for a ghost. It’s painful when the clarity comes.

Yet despite everything it helps, and for the first time Yuui stops lying to himself.

He realizes he owes it to himself, to Fai, to stop lying.

* * *

With three words, his world turns upside down.

“Forgive me, Kurogane,” Fai says. And then he tells the truth— all of it.

The accident, the loss of his arm, his brother dying in the hospital while they operated on Fai. The arm replacement they did. The timer flicking back to life afterwards, none of the doctors expecting that.

“I decided that I owed it to Fai,” Fai— Yuui— says. “To live life for both of us.”

Kurogane doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing.

It just sinks in as he thinks about it. The small way things couldn’t mesh, the feeling that something was off.

Yet, his timer went off, their song played.

Was it all for a dead man?

Or was it for this man?

Kurogane doesn’t know, and Yuui doesn’t give him time to find out.

His silence is answer enough, apparently, and Yuui gives him a sad smile and then walks out the door.

Kurogane remains there, frozen, unsure what to do.

A relationship built upon a lie isn’t worth saving, is it?

**Author's Note:**

> **Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment and follow the link to vote!**   
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